----- Original Message ----- From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
That (view of Hamlet) was invented by Coleridge, who used the play as a mirror. I think it's a distortion of the play, confirmed by slow-moving production of drama the last few centuries. Acted out as rapidly as was probably the case in 1600, with formulaic presentation of emotion, no one would ever see it that way.
Carrol --------------------------------------
I don't think so. The issue of incomplete mourning and that of the succession and what one is succeeding to, are essential to the play. These necessarily involve feelings that cannot be articulated in Hamlet's hierarchical world, but which he does feel and attempt to reflect upon.
Whether the play is acted quickly or slowly, does not change Hamlet's conundrum. As for the "formulaic presentation of emotion," I find it passing strange that you should evoke this in the case of Hamlet, who holds forth in the middle of the play specifically against formulaic dramatic presentation.
J.